jenn

So, more ganking ideas from someone else's blog. I'm feeling horribly unmotivated lately, and think the Weekly Resolutions might help. Maybe. Kind of possible that it might.

Hit the gym! I'm shooting for...3 times this week. So, yesterday, I marked off an item that's been on my To-Do list for, OH, I DON'T KNOW, A YEAR and found and joined a gym. It totally looks like one of those '70s apartment complex gyms that's kind of tacked onto a giant indoor soccer field (HOME OF THE RIVERHOUNDS! or...something) and is only $29 a month. DJ used to be a member; now he gets to abuse the gym at CMU. Lucky bastard. I'll probably just hit the treadmill until I can figure out that whole free-weight thing.

Cook dinner one night from a recipe from my tragically unused cookbooks. I have about two dozen cookbooks that never get cracked open, ever. I even have one really awesome one that I think I've now effectively stolen from a friend in Philly; I'm pretty sure I'm passed the "borrowed" statute of limitations on that one. And another book I got as a gift on "San Franciscan" food that I drool over whenever I do open it, but have never made one damned thing from it. I think this and the gym will be two recurring resolutions.

Sort through my inhuman amounts of clothing. I have more clothes than drawer/closet space. It's kind of sad. Okay, more than "kind of." And I only wear about a third of my wardrobe, so there's a lot of fat to cut.

Process all those damned photos! I have, literally, 1500 photos sitting on my harddrive that I haven't sorted through yet. People have been emailing and harassing me for photos from various events/outings for MONTHS. See: aforementioned lack of motivation. Plus I'd like to actually start picking up gigs here and there on the side, and processing is, like, an important part of being a photographer, I think. And on that note, Sign up for that digital photography class, because holy shit this thing has a lot of buttons.

Get on top of my freelancing! All the crazy changes in my life over the past couple months have made me rather depressed, which of course totally kills my motivation. All I want to do when I get home is lay about and go "unnngh" on the couch and watch 4 hours of Law and Order instead of bang away at my computer, so my freelancing has gotten terribly behind. Get back to it, you slacker!

And I think any more resolutions will kill me. Baby steps. The awesome weather lately is totally helping with the funk I've gotten myself into, and getting parts of my life back in order will also help. Let's go!

Man, I just went through and corrected a ton of spelling and grammar mistakes in my last post. I even re-read it before I posted and caught a few errors, but, wow. Maybe I should start posting more often to keep the ol' cogs oiled and in working order, as most of what I write/type these days is in Web Nerd[tm].


Dear brain,

Come on, get it together. We're not yet 30, you can't crap out on us now.

Love,
Jenn

I have a station on Pandora that's called "Sad Bastard Music" that I listen to from time to time. It's actually been around for about three years, but I go through spurts of listening to it all the time and then forgetting about it for a while (which is tragically appropriate.) I think there's only one person that would know what bands and "feel" comprise this station, and whom it reminds me of every time I listen to it, and that's only if they remember a quick, random post of mine from a couple years ago. And really, who would?

A couple weeks ago I was bored and read through a bunch of posts from iCiNG (which I think is the capitalization of that) and she has this thing called "Things I Love Thursdays". I think the general idea was to list a few things that you're happy about. On Thursdays. And hey, look, it's Thursday. I'm going to go with...five things.

1. Pandora! I'm pretty glad that this exists. I've come across bands that I otherwise would have never listened to, and it's awesome to be able to set a station based on my mood.
   
2. Scooter season. Ahh, the smell of two-stroke and having perma-grime under my fingernails. Even when I'm working on them more than I'm riding them, I still love me the hell out of some scooter.
   
3. Upcoming trips. I'm going to SF in a month! So excited! I try to go at least once a year, but last year had a trip to Portland/Seattle instead. We're also going to be checking out neighborhoods to *gasp!* live in. Squeeee.
   
4. Cutely decorated baked goods. A picture posted on my friends list got me looking at the website for a local bakery here, and oh man some of their offerings are DARLING. I want to be a cake decorator!
   
5. I received an email the other day from someone, who mentioned that I was missed amongst a group of people who haven't seen me in almost 10 years. It made me feel a little less like a lost cause. But still, I really have to stop burning the shit out of every bridge I cross.
   

Hey you foodies out there (/me eyes petit_chou, et al),

Anyone have a good hummus recipe? I've done the pre-requisite "hummus recipe" search on Google, but you just never know. I also tried making one I found on food.com, but it was from Rachael Ray and was TERRIBLE, and even though it had 5 out of 5 stars I'm convinced now that some people are just Rachael Ray zealots since like everything she has on there is 5 stars.

Anyway.

Hummus? Yeah? Woo!

So, I started writing about my Europe trips, but I don't really have any motivation to finish, so the Cliff's notes:

Frankfurt -> Paris -> Brugge -> Brussels -> Rotterdam -> Utrecht -> Amsterdam -> Lost in Germany -> Frankfurt -> Pittsburgh for 3 weeks -> Frankfurt -> Prague -> Munich -> Somewhere in Austria -> Zurich -> Frankfurt -> Pittsburgh

( A little more detail. )

and my mom just sent me an email of LOLcats. the universe will end shortly, please return your seat backs and tray tables to their upright and locked positions.

OH MY GOD JUST BOUGHT EDDIE IZZARD TICKETSJDFH

dear european car manufacturers,

seriously, did a cup holder kill your parents?

love,
jenn (and her coffee-soaked right shoe)

i bought a car yesterday. woo! i have another saab to name.

Wait, so, I just realized I went to Europe for like a month at the end of last year and I never really said anything. (Minus a quick post from Paris.)

( So yeah. )

These days I am obsessed with Yé-yé* and mod 60s dresses. Jacques Dutronc is my 45-picture-sleeve boyfriend. Over the weekend, I bought this, this, this, this and this. And I need mooooore but I've banned myself from eBay for the time being. So, for now, I'm listening to ridiculous 60s French covers of Wild Thing and waiting impatiently for scooter weather.



* - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y%C3%A9-y%C3%A9

Sometimes I try to imagine what my life would be like if I hadn't done this or went there or took that job. It's sort of a crazy landscape of past lives, wondering where each would have gone if it was allowed to play out. Imagining alternative planes and parallel realities of Jenn. While bored yesterday, I filled out a survey that asked where all I had lived; it took me about a half hour, but: 45 individual domiciles in 21 cities/towns. It's like I keep taking the exit ramp to get snacks and fill up the tank, and get caught up in another interstate. Or maybe that I don't really know where I'm going, I only have a vague idea, and I keep taking interchanges thinking "This HAS to be the right one."

Like, what would have happened if I hadn't moved to LA? I would probably be married and kid'ed and working as a, say, assistant manager at a Starbucks in one of the thousands of malls in the metro Phoenix area. Or as an assistant manager at a department store photo studio. I might have even gone to (community) college. But, really, would that be so bad? I wonder if I would be happy if my life were that simple. I wonder if I could allow my life to be that simple.

Nearly all of my exes are married or on their way, save a few who are probably as terminally single as I am. I once had a pact with a friend/lust interest/fellow serial monogamist that if neither of us were married by the time we hit 40, we would get hitched to each other. He's been married four years now. Not that I'm in a big rush to tie the knot, it's just one of the main markers (to me) of settling down, settling into your life. Like, you know, "Hey, I pick this life. No more exit ramps."

They're able to maintain relationships with friends and significant others and stay in the same general area and work at the same place and seem to be okay with it all, and I wonder what the hell I'm doing wrong. What step am I missing? Am I just going about this all the wrong way? I'm sure my plight is the same as a good chunk of people my age, but I'm not sure if that's comforting. Sometimes I wonder if I'm just not wired for that; everything will be going A-OK and then suddenly I'll get that same bug, same urge, to get up and go. What am I looking for that I don't already have?

So I move in with Boyfriend #9238 in City #7382, State #295, with Friends Group #5472 and I'm about to start Job #29389 and I wonder if I got the right interchange. But I know I haven't, I just hope I'm going in the right direction.

so. i saw i am legend (the movie) yesterday.

as i am legend is one of my favorite books OF ALL TIME, ( edited, as this might be seen as a spoiler. (although no real details of the movie are given.) )

one of these days i'll get around to posting about europe, but in the meantime, here's a video i saw while there that i LOVE SO SO MUCH. the song and video are cute as all hell.



mika - big girls (you are beautiful)

hello from paris ! keyboards are fucked up here. look what i can do though: ùé²è_çà è_ç looks like a mime face.

we went to a scooter bar called "ne nous fachons pas." it was smaller than my bedroom. we want to go back, but more drunk next time.

going to rent scooters tomorrow and see the eiffel tower. is thqt how you spell eiffel ? whatever.

i communicated with a waitress today in a weird bastard language of french, english, spanish, and crude sign-language. it was awesome, but the pasta was not.

au bientôt !

found while looking for an old post:

does this count as irony?

sooo... that whole "daily jenn" thing? a combination of drunken karaoke and my rampant ADD, the camera has been missing for like a week and a half. but yay! it has been recovered. but then, i'm going to europe in three days. so hmm. maybe i wasn't cut out for something that requires my attention so often.

so, partly inspired by a day in my life and mostly inspired by this guy (a fellow pittsburghian), i'm going to photo-document every day of my life in the month of november. i've got a journal (this one) i barely use and a flickr pro account burning a hole in my pocket.

let's do it!

this won't be nearly as interesting as it sounds.

1. i am listening to the daft punk set from coachella 2006 and it's rocking my face off. and the faces of the rest of my wing of the office, because i am playing it as loud as i can.

2. magic hat bottle cap wisdom: "it's still home if you're alone"

3. i think i want to go to culinary school.

4. this daft punk set is continuing to rock my face completely off.

I'm still here. I sometimes forget that livejournal isn't a spectator sport. I suppose I just don't have much to update on? Still working and living in Pittsburgh, still dating DJ, still haven't fully unpacked my apartment in the eight months I've been living there. I guess there might be more to say, but that would involve filters and actually typing things out, and some things you just don't want to put enough thought into to write out, you know? Somewhere along the line I stopped talking about my feelings in my journal, and it's starting to happen in person, too.

Anyone want to go get a drink? Oh wait, none of you actually live here.